ABX Air
08-08-2019, 08:13 AM
#71
New Hire
Joined APC: Aug 2019
Posts: 1
Whoop whoop pull out
Just received a job offer from Abex. Was told by the chief pilot upgrade time is five years? Any truth to this? They did not give much information on the schedule? How long are people sitting on reserve? Thank you
GR(@)
GR(@)
08-08-2019, 08:54 AM
#72
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jun 2008
Posts: 207
It will be an absolute mistake to accept a position at ABX at this time. There are many, many threads and posts within other threads about the present state of the airline. With so many other opportunities (yes...including ATI), do yourself justice and wait for another call from elsewhere.
Regardless....to answer your questions.
- Upgrade: Presently hanging around 22-23 years (1996 hire date). It will eventually get to lower seniority numbers. 5 years is a pure guess at best.
- Reserve: Going by straight seniority (assuming everyone who can hold a line actually does)...F/O reserve would start at a hire date of Dec' 2016. So you would sit reserve for a long time.
- Schedule: Always complex to fully explain. In short, you work 17 days a month. Can be in a single shot, broken in 2 or 3 blocks. Never less than 3 days off in a row during mid-month.
I hope this helps you and any others in making informed decisions.
Regardless....to answer your questions.
- Upgrade: Presently hanging around 22-23 years (1996 hire date). It will eventually get to lower seniority numbers. 5 years is a pure guess at best.
- Reserve: Going by straight seniority (assuming everyone who can hold a line actually does)...F/O reserve would start at a hire date of Dec' 2016. So you would sit reserve for a long time.
- Schedule: Always complex to fully explain. In short, you work 17 days a month. Can be in a single shot, broken in 2 or 3 blocks. Never less than 3 days off in a row during mid-month.
I hope this helps you and any others in making informed decisions.
08-08-2019, 10:38 PM
#74
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Jun 2006
Position: Left, right & center
Posts: 769
Originally Posted by Cancelpush
Just received a job offer from Abex. Was told by the chief pilot upgrade time is five years? Any truth to this? They did not give much information on the schedule? How long are people sitting on reserve?
That said, if you need to go somewhere and this is the only option you have at the moment, then I'll add a little bit to what abxflyr gave you.
Probably the first thing you need to know is that getting an offer from ABX is no kind of major achievement today. The company has been in a hiring mode for some time, partly because they are unable to hire in any significant numbers. There have been many no-shows for classes and many dropouts in the first week of training. As the company has lowered its standards for who is hired, there have been a shocking (to me, anyway) number of training washouts. IOE used to be 25 hours. It is now 50 hours, and I've heard stories of some going beyond 60 hours and still not getting it. So if you want to take the offer, you first need to make a serious assessment of your flying skills. You need to be willing to learn new procedures, flows, profiles, and callouts, and put them all together - first in the simulator and then in the airplane. These guys are serious about this stuff. You need to be, too. You will be given every opportunity to succeed, but it is entirely up to you to do it. The training department is not going to carry you, and the line most definitely will not.
Regarding upgrades, I always enjoy watching the reaction when pilots at other companies ask me about our upgrade times, and I tell them it's something in excess of 20 years. That is entirely owing to the history of ABX, which you should look up. Five years? At this point, I will be surprised if I upgrade much faster than that, and I have been here almost three years. People who hired in a few months ahead of me were told to expect two years. At the time, it wasn't unreasonable. Now, two years is a distant dream. As it stands now, the first 40-ish FOs on the list have been with the company for more than 20 years. We have upgraded six so far this year - the first upgrades since 2017 - and current plans are to upgrade about that many more. Retirements have been happening more quickly than anybody expected, so there might be a need to upgrade more, but a significant contract just expired and went to a competitor, so I wouldn't count on that happening. Some growth would certainly help those numbers, but we have been told that there will be no growth until the CEO gets the contract he wants (and there is no discernible progress on a contract of any sort), and some of our projected growth was already diverted to a sister airline two years ago because the union got tired of putting up with the company's abuses and put a stop to them.
Strictly speaking, abxflyr is correct about reserve. The number of flying lines we have fluctuates month-to-month, sometimes significantly. Not long ago, the number of flying lines shrank so far that people who had never been on reserve ended up getting reserve lines. For September, the demarcation point for who can expect to hold a flying line is somewhere in the middle of the group that was hired in December of 2016. Some who have been here about a year have been getting flying lines the last few months, which can happen in the summer months and the winter holidays when more people bid reserve to get the days off they want. But again, the ending of that contract will put a big damper on that.
So there you go. Take the job or don't based on what you need or want to do. But if you do take it, know that you have been warned. Do not come here and whine about it later.
08-09-2019, 05:45 AM
#75
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Feb 2007
Position: Fetal and Fatigued
Posts: 349
Excellent post Reactivity. And just to clarify for people potentially thinking of coming here....the most recent Captain upgrade class (which started this week) has the junior captain with a 02/1997 hire date.
08-09-2019, 06:21 AM
#76
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: May 2018
Posts: 109
So there you go. Take the job or don't based on what you need or want to do. But if you do take it, know that you have been warned. Do not come here and whine about it later.[/QUOTE]
Yet you are still there and You are constantly whining.
Do as I say not as I do. Got it.
Yet you are still there and You are constantly whining.
Do as I say not as I do. Got it.
08-09-2019, 06:36 AM
#77
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Apr 2007
Posts: 1,804
Originally Posted by Reactivity
The first thing I'll say is that if you have an offer from almost anywhere else, you should take it. There really isn't anything at ABX that would make it better than any regional job at this point. It isn't going to move you toward whatever goals you have any faster, and it really isn't a great prospect as a career destination today.
That said, if you need to go somewhere and this is the only option you have at the moment, then I'll add a little bit to what abxflyr gave you.
Probably the first thing you need to know is that getting an offer from ABX is no kind of major achievement today. The company has been in a hiring mode for some time, partly because they are unable to hire in any significant numbers. There have been many no-shows for classes and many dropouts in the first week of training. As the company has lowered its standards for who is hired, there have been a shocking (to me, anyway) number of training washouts. IOE used to be 25 hours. It is now 50 hours, and I've heard stories of some going beyond 60 hours and still not getting it. So if you want to take the offer, you first need to make a serious assessment of your flying skills. You need to be willing to learn new procedures, flows, profiles, and callouts, and put them all together - first in the simulator and then in the airplane. These guys are serious about this stuff. You need to be, too. You will be given every opportunity to succeed, but it is entirely up to you to do it. The training department is not going to carry you, and the line most definitely will not.
Regarding upgrades, I always enjoy watching the reaction when pilots at other companies ask me about our upgrade times, and I tell them it's something in excess of 20 years. That is entirely owing to the history of ABX, which you should look up. Five years? At this point, I will be surprised if I upgrade much faster than that, and I have been here almost three years. People who hired in a few months ahead of me were told to expect two years. At the time, it wasn't unreasonable. Now, two years is a distant dream. As it stands now, the first 40-ish FOs on the list have been with the company for more than 20 years. We have upgraded six so far this year - the first upgrades since 2017 - and current plans are to upgrade about that many more. Retirements have been happening more quickly than anybody expected, so there might be a need to upgrade more, but a significant contract just expired and went to a competitor, so I wouldn't count on that happening. Some growth would certainly help those numbers, but we have been told that there will be no growth until the CEO gets the contract he wants (and there is no discernible progress on a contract of any sort), and some of our projected growth was already diverted to a sister airline two years ago because the union got tired of putting up with the company's abuses and put a stop to them.
Strictly speaking, abxflyr is correct about reserve. The number of flying lines we have fluctuates month-to-month, sometimes significantly. Not long ago, the number of flying lines shrank so far that people who had never been on reserve ended up getting reserve lines. For September, the demarcation point for who can expect to hold a flying line is somewhere in the middle of the group that was hired in December of 2016. Some who have been here about a year have been getting flying lines the last few months, which can happen in the summer months and the winter holidays when more people bid reserve to get the days off they want. But again, the ending of that contract will put a big damper on that.
So there you go. Take the job or don't based on what you need or want to do. But if you do take it, know that you have been warned. Do not come here and whine about it later.
That said, if you need to go somewhere and this is the only option you have at the moment, then I'll add a little bit to what abxflyr gave you.
Probably the first thing you need to know is that getting an offer from ABX is no kind of major achievement today. The company has been in a hiring mode for some time, partly because they are unable to hire in any significant numbers. There have been many no-shows for classes and many dropouts in the first week of training. As the company has lowered its standards for who is hired, there have been a shocking (to me, anyway) number of training washouts. IOE used to be 25 hours. It is now 50 hours, and I've heard stories of some going beyond 60 hours and still not getting it. So if you want to take the offer, you first need to make a serious assessment of your flying skills. You need to be willing to learn new procedures, flows, profiles, and callouts, and put them all together - first in the simulator and then in the airplane. These guys are serious about this stuff. You need to be, too. You will be given every opportunity to succeed, but it is entirely up to you to do it. The training department is not going to carry you, and the line most definitely will not.
Regarding upgrades, I always enjoy watching the reaction when pilots at other companies ask me about our upgrade times, and I tell them it's something in excess of 20 years. That is entirely owing to the history of ABX, which you should look up. Five years? At this point, I will be surprised if I upgrade much faster than that, and I have been here almost three years. People who hired in a few months ahead of me were told to expect two years. At the time, it wasn't unreasonable. Now, two years is a distant dream. As it stands now, the first 40-ish FOs on the list have been with the company for more than 20 years. We have upgraded six so far this year - the first upgrades since 2017 - and current plans are to upgrade about that many more. Retirements have been happening more quickly than anybody expected, so there might be a need to upgrade more, but a significant contract just expired and went to a competitor, so I wouldn't count on that happening. Some growth would certainly help those numbers, but we have been told that there will be no growth until the CEO gets the contract he wants (and there is no discernible progress on a contract of any sort), and some of our projected growth was already diverted to a sister airline two years ago because the union got tired of putting up with the company's abuses and put a stop to them.
Strictly speaking, abxflyr is correct about reserve. The number of flying lines we have fluctuates month-to-month, sometimes significantly. Not long ago, the number of flying lines shrank so far that people who had never been on reserve ended up getting reserve lines. For September, the demarcation point for who can expect to hold a flying line is somewhere in the middle of the group that was hired in December of 2016. Some who have been here about a year have been getting flying lines the last few months, which can happen in the summer months and the winter holidays when more people bid reserve to get the days off they want. But again, the ending of that contract will put a big damper on that.
So there you go. Take the job or don't based on what you need or want to do. But if you do take it, know that you have been warned. Do not come here and whine about it later.
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